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I am pleased to say we have now completed this and the results can be seen here.

Hopefully the information will allow you to work out the best way to approach your marketing to schools.The survey we sent was deliberately short to encourage responses and, more specifically, to find out answers to the key questions which would help us, and subsequently you, improve results from email campaigns sent to schools.

• Schools prefer to receive emails prior to 9am in the morning
• Very few emails are personalised at all, whether to that particular school, to a specific teacher or even to a subject area
  
• Schools do not like receiving emails on Friday
• Most schools DO forward emails which contain a name or job title in the subject line
• 75% of schools receive between 10 and 50 emails per day

Based on this information, we believe it is important to state how we will use this information to improve the quality of service we offer.

1. We will ALWAYS send your email before 9am, AT NO EXTRA COST, unless you ask us not to

1. we will ALWAYS personalise your email with the school name, FREE OF CHARGE, unless you ask us not to

1. we will ALWAYS include a name or job title in your email subject line, AT NO EXTRA COST, unless you don’t want us to

1. we will NEVER send your email on a Friday, unless you want us to

Thanks for your time.

Direct mail, or postal mail, can be an expensive form of marketing. Compared to email campaigns, they take longer to set up and send, are more difficult to track and costs are directly related to the current cost of postage (due to rise again very soon). When taking all this into consideration, it is worth wondering why anyone should consider direct mail at all.

The simple answer is that it gets results.

Historically, this has always been the case and it still remains so today. In fact, the amount of direct mail schools receive is less than it has been for many years. So if you sent something to the Head of English in UK Secondary Schools 10 years ago, there is a chance your item would be one of many. Today, it is likely that yours may be the only one.

It is not difficult to work out that you are more likely to get your voice heard in this situation.

If you haven’t run a direct mail campaign before, it wouldn’t be wise to commit to mailing 5000 or 10000 schools straight away. It may be worth considering running a smaller mail campaign to test your response rate though. Imagine you send a mailing and get a 2% response, you could safely assume that this response rate would stay the same (all things being equal) whether you mailed 100 schools or 10000 schools.

We can manage a mailing campaign for you, from supply of data to design, print, fulfilment and send. For more details about our direct mail service, click here to see our promotional information.

If you are interested in finding out how schools deal with postal mail when it arrives, you can take a look at the information we have put together called ‘What Do Schools Do With Direct Mail?’

If you would like to find out more, or simply get a quote for a mail campaign, don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Thanks for your time.

Having not mentioned Academy Schools and Free Schools for a while, this seems like an opportune moment to do so, having found out yesterday that a Free School will be opening in the building next door to us from September 2012.

A quick look at the development of Academy Schools over the last 2 years shows the growth they have gone through.

May 2010   203 Academy Schools
Apr 2011    626 Academy School
Feb 2012   over 1500 Academy Schools

In summary, the number of Academy Schools has more than doubled year on year since 2010.

Now, please excuse my laziness here but it seems appropriate to offer a little explanation about what an Academy School is for those who don’t know. To do this, I have regurgitated some of the information I sent out a few months ago.

What is an Academy School?

An Academy School is different to a traditional school in a number of ways. In the words of the Department for Education website, they are “publicly funded independent schools that provide a first class education.”

To add some substance to these words, a quick summary;

• They have freedom from local authority control, meaning they can set their own term dates, decide the length of their school days, be more creative about how to deliver their curriculum and set their own pay and conditions for staff
• Academy Schools receive the same level of funding per pupil as other schools, but also receive extra finance to cover the services which would otherwise have been supplied by the Local Authority
• Funding is received from the Young Peoples Learning Agency (a Department for Education agency) rather than the Local Authority
• Academy Schools can also seek sponsorship from businesses, universities, charities and other bodies

Do Academy Schools have different spending patterns than other schools?

Academy School’s financial years run differently in that they are managed between September and August. This means that the start of a school year, traditionally a good time for marketing to schools, could be even more lucrative for those selling to Academy Schools since budgets will just have been allocated and money will be available to spend. It also means that the traditionally quiet month of April could be a good time to promote to Academy Schools.

How can I sell to Academy Schools?

Academy Schools can be contacted like any other schools, using the traditional schools marketing methods of post, email, telephone, etc. We currently have data for all Open Academy schools, and continually update this data.

The Academy Schools Database

We can supply a full database of Academy Schools, containing postal addresses, email addresses and telephone numbers for £199 plus VAT. The database is supplied on a multi-use rental and comes with a free 6 month update. To order, call 01257 460036 or email info@schoolmailings.com. Alternatively, you can visit www.schoolmailings.com/academies for more information about our Academy Schools programme.

Thanks for your time.

I was a little irritated earlier this week to receive a telephone enquiry. This is not something I would normally say as, like all businesses, we always want to find more clients.

All seemed to be fine when the caller enquired about our Academy Schools Database (available for £199 with a free 6 month update – shameless plug). I explained the features of the database to him and waited for his thoughts. He explained he was calling from a print company and asked if we ever did any printing. The quick answer is that we do, though we are fortunate to have our own presses and do the vast majority of our printing in house. Where we do send out the odd bit of printing, we have a very good relationship with a partner and wouldn’t want to change this. The caller asked if he could send me his promotional pack showcasing their print services. Ever intrigued by how other companies promote themselves, I handed over our address details and waited for him to go back to the original discussion about the Academy Database.

It never did and he said thanks for my time.

To some extent, I had been ‘had’. He had called with no intention of engaging in business with us and simply wanted to find an angle by which he could get my attention. He certainly got my attention but used a very unethical way of doing this. His promotional pack, which was pretty impressive, went straight in the bin.

This leads on to telemarketing. We often get calls asking if we offer telemarketing services. It is not our area of specialism so we don’t (though are happy to recommend a very good company if necessary). There are also some difficulties associated with telemarketing to schools.

In fact, there are 3 main problems;

Whilst we can’t help with points b and c (though can advise on things which might help), we can certainly supply lists of names and telephone numbers.

If you would like to find out about our telemarketing lists, or schools databases in general, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Thanks for your time.